


Dead Man

by lasergirl



Category: Once Upon a Time in Mexico (2003)
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2010-04-02
Updated: 2010-04-02
Packaged: 2017-10-08 15:51:17
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 531
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/77266
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/lasergirl/pseuds/lasergirl





	Dead Man

_**OUATIM: Dead Man**_  
**Title:** Dead Man  
**Fandom:** _Once Upon A Time In Mexico_  
**Rating:** PG  
**Characters:** Sands/El Mariachi  
**Notes:** Sands is dead. Someone brings him back to life.

  
There are flowers at his feet and his head. He can smell the scent of them, taste the pollen in the air. They are _tagetes lucida_, the spicy scented Mexican marigold from the Sierra Madre.

He is a dead man and someone has laid him to rest.

Candles burn nearby, sweet beeswax and scented tallow melting in clay holders. The gentle hiss of the wicks is like a roar of wind in his ears.

In his hand is a rosary of skull-shaped bone beads. There is one bead for each of his sins, and one remaining for every future sin. They sit cold between his fingers.

He is a sinner and someone is praying for his soul.

Mingled with the beeswax is the smell of burning petals from the flowers. They wither to a crisp and turn to ash as they are cast upon the flame. The man who casts them is unseen.

He is a blind man and someone is acting as his eyes.

A roughened hand opens his mouth and places something onto his tongue. The flavour of liquorice fills his mouth, billows into his sinuses. He imagines the vapours escaping from the hollows where his eyes once were. There is nothing now but black, empty space. A universe of nothing, between his brows and cheekbones. The whole world can be contained in these orbits.

The prayer is soft and whispered. His ears do not recognize the words. The spicy smoke in the air sears his lungs, the soft incense burning with the liquorice. His eyes are pits of blackened tar.

The pain is nothing. The pain is a wide-open space with a whistling wind, the highest mountaintop where the marigolds grow wild. The pain is an ancient, dusty relic from some time long ago, when human sacrifice was common and blood was nothing.

The bone beads between his fingers click as he counts them. The beeswax bubbles and hisses, and the flowers burn. He imagines a funeral pyre with his body in the centre, burning, turning to ash and smoke.

The darkness in his head is filled with the colours and shapes of Northern Lights, the _Aurora Borealis_ he has seen only once and will never forget. The colours spark across the empty caverns, lighting waves and pools of brightness. His eyes are not open or closed, they are the new development of sight, the gift of inner vision. The dormant third eye awakened after evolution had forgotten. He is in a cave older than the world, the birthplace of the universe, as God would have made it if he believed in God.

As the aurora sparkling in his skull, his body receives comfort. His attendant feeds him the liquorice leaves and burns the petals in the fire. He blows the fragrant smoke into the hollowed-out eyes to stem the blood. They will heal now, but he will always cry tears of blood in penance.

He is a dead man, risen to live again.  


Questions? Comments? Feedback always appreciated.


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